Great Speeches of Modern India edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee; Random House; Price: Rs.395; 446 pp In the history of all nations there’s no shortage of examples which prove that great orators and oratory can move mountains and multitudes. In ancient India, the profound discourses of the philosopher-prince Krishna — as recorded by the poet-sage Vyasa — became the bedrock of Hinduism and Indian civilisation. In ancient Greece, great philosophers such as Plato and Cicero orated from public forums delivering percipient wisdom which laid the foundations of western civilisation. And as recounted in William Shakespeare’s epic tragedy Julius Caesar, Mark Antony delivered one of the greatest public addresses of all time which moved the cynical proletariat of ancient Rome to mutiny and rage, and changed the course of world history. Fortunately modern, especially 20th century India was also well-served by great orators who moved the down-trodden masses to mutiny and mass mobilisation during this country’s unique freedom movement, which humbled arguably the greatest empire in world history and precipitated the end of British imperialism. Rudrangshu Mukherjee, editor of the Kolkata-based daily The Telegraph, has rendered the nation and civic society great service by compiling this rivetting compendium which presents an eclectic mix of epochal speeches delivered by charismatic Indians — mainly in politics but also from other walks of life — whose words turned the tides of history in the period spanning the 19th to the early 21st century. Although he concedes that great speeches are meant to be spoken and heard rather than read, and that a “good orator brings to a speech something more persuasive and moving than the power of the written word”, Mukherjee believes — and rightly so — that certain public addresses “retain their emotive charge” even in the printed form. But this is a somewhat subjective collection — not even one of the many momentous public speeches or annual Union budget analyses of the late Nani Palkhivala which attracted perhaps the largest middle class audiences in post-independence India’s history and turned public opinion against neta-babu socialism, is included in this anthology. Ditto C. R. Rajagopalchari (Rajaji), founder of the pro-private enterprise Swatantra party, whose learned oratory provoked the first major electoral revolt against the hegemonic Congress party in the general election of 1967. One suspects these omissions are because Palkhivala and Rajaji represented ‘right wing’ economic opinion which is anathema to Kolkata intellectuals. However, to be fair, two speeches of the late JRD Tata and even one of RSS stalwart V.D. Savarkar (challenging the “dangerous cult of absolute non-violence”) are included. The chronological sequence in which the great speeches are presented in part one of this anthology enables the reader to discern the incremental tempo of India’s freedom movement. In 1885, while inaugurating the Indian National Congress, Womesh Chandra Bonerjee pleaded with Parliament in Westminster for India “to be governed according to the principles prevalent in Europe (which) is in no way incompatible with our loyalty to the British government”. Two decades later, in a stirring address, the ageing Bal Gangadhar Tilak…
